Living a Sleepless Life

Feb 20, 2008 - 09:59 AM PST

Studies in America and developed nations all over the world are showing more and more people are getting less and less sleep. College students report on average getting between 4-6 hours of sleep. But it doesn’t seem the problem starts there, as a lot of high school students report similar problems. And it certainly doesn’t end in college either, as a lot of quarterlifers try to figure out where to fit sleep into their schedules and get ahead or make it in the world. For artists sleep can be a big issue as well. If you’re under a deadline, endlessly auditioning, or even after you’ve landed that big role and are performing, sleep can seem to slip away. The issue is: no matter who you are or what you’re doing, studies generally show people are more productive on 8 hours of sleep. And yes there are always exceptions to the rules, but most people I know aren’t close to 8.

What’s scary to me is that sleep deprivation is used by most militaries to break prisoners down as quickly as possible. Now I know when we think of sleep deprivation we think of toothpicks under the eyelids and blasting Spice Girls music to annoy someone, but recent studies have shown that those extremes are only effective in causing someone to be delusional and not conducive to getting information out of them. As anyone who has ever pulled an all-nighter that wasn’t drug induced knows, the next day you usually can’t function as well and certainly can’t continue to function at a high level. Most studies show the most effective way to break someone down is not to keep them awake forever, but to only allow them to sleep between 2-5 hours a day! This seems to be about the average for a lot of people I know and it opens everyone up to a whole host of other issues. Lack of sleep can make you emotionally unstable and make it difficult for you to focus and perform tasks like driving. Lack of sleep may even massively stunt your brain’s growth and development.

It seems a lot of people turn to their caffeine fix for an answer, but even that will only get you so far. The real answer is in finding some way to manage your time and, more importantly, creating a space in your life that allows you to sleep. Unfortunately, when we live in a world that has us looking at our crackberries, or I-phones, for any type of signal so we can work all the time, that can be difficult. I definitely don’t have all of the answers in the world, because everyone is different, but I manage to get about 7-8 hours of sleep a night. I do this by making a certain time to turn off my cell phone, trying to have a schedule where I go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday, taking time for my mental health, making sure to see friends and people I like- not just people from work- and lastly setting limits for myself to make sure I’m ok. If you don’t sleep let me know why and if you do let me know what you do!

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